American politics

Rand Paul's filibuster

An off-target drone

THE Senate has spent the past couple of days demanding clear explanations from Eric Holder, the attorney general, of when he thinks America's government is justified in using lethal force on American soil. That's all to the good. The American security state has expanded to an unconscionable degree over the course of the war on terror, and it's great that liberty-minded Republicans are starting to consider this cause for real concern. On Wednesday, Rand Paul, a Republican senator from Kentucky, commenced an old-fashioned barnstormin' country-style talking filibuster of Barack Obama's nominee for CIA director, John Brennan, in protest over the administration's policies on the use of drones. That's also all to the good. American drones are being used to kill suspected terrorists in entirely too cavalier a fashion, killing at a minimum hundreds of innocent civilians, and the administration's procedures for deciding when to authorise drone strikes are opaque and lack due process.

What's a little stranger, though, is the way these two issues are being conflated. As Adam Serwer writes, both Mr Paul and Ted Cruz, a Republican senator from Texas, have been pressing the administration on when or whether drones might be used to kill American citizens on American soil. Mr Paul's initial demand before allowing a vote on Mr Brennan was for an administration explanation of its views on such strikes. In his filibuster he vowed to "speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court." And in hearings Wednesday, Mr Cruz demanded that Mr Holder say whether he believed the military could kill a citizen who did not pose an imminent terrorist threat:

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, suggested a hypothetical situation in which a terrorism suspect was not presenting an immediate threat—like “sitting in a cafe” rather than “pointing a bazooka at the Pentagon”—and asked whether it would be unconstitutional for the military to simply kill that citizen.

Mr. Holder repeatedly said that it would not be appropriate to use lethal force rather than arresting the suspect, but Mr. Cruz said he was asking a “simple question” about its constitutionality, not its propriety. Finally, Mr. Holder said: “Translate my ‘appropriate’ to ‘no.’ I thought I was saying ‘no.’ All right? ‘No.'”

This is a red herring. Americans don't need to worry that the government is going to kill them with drones, whether they're sitting at a cafe or anywhere else, for precisely the reason Mr Holder articulates: inside America, the American government is capable of arresting people, jailing them, and bringing them to trial. The entire reason why drones exist is precisely that America is now carrying out police operations in areas of the world where it can't arrest people, both for legal reasons and more importantly for strategic ones. American forces do not control the territory in Afghanistan, much less Yemen or Pakistan's northwest territories. Even when we had 110,000 troops in Afghanistan, we did not have effective tactical control of most of the country's territory, most of the time. Indeed, nobody did. Drones are, in a sense, a weapon of weakness; they're an acknowledgement that we have given up trying to pacify the countries where terrorist organisations are based, to "drain the swamp" as counter-insurgency parlance has it. We kill suspected terrorists with drones because we lack the capability to arrest them.

The "drone killings on American soil" meme seems to me like a mirror image of the "terrorist assassinations on American soil" meme that seized the American imagination in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks. In TV shows like "24", "NCIS" and "Sleeper Cell", and even now in "Homeland", the background assumption is that Islamic extremist terrorist groups are operating kill teams in America that may do things like shooting specific government agents or blowing up military installations as part of a complex and well-thought-out strategy of terror. This, of course, is not even close to true; it should have been clear by 2003 or so that there were no terrorist cells operating on American soil and no pinpoint attacks were ever going to happen. Terrorism, where it occurred (overwhelmingly outside the US), would continue to be sporadic, semi-coherent and targeted at strangers. But the American vision of the enemy demanded something different: a calculating terrorist mastermind, a secret organisation with startling capabilities, an evil with intent.

The fixation on domestic drone strikes is similar. For Americans to get exercised about government abuse of power, the victims have to be Americans in America, and it's not enough to picture the lumbering behemoth of cloddish national-security organisations damaging people's lives for reasons of venality or bureaucratic inertia. We need to imagine a ruthless, deliberate conspiracy, and the crime has to be murder. This distracts us from, as Sinead O'Connor would put it, fighting the real evil. The real domestic victims of our growing police state are namesakes condemned to eternal no-fly lists and whistleblowers subjected to techniques of psychic disintegration. The victims of drone strikes are mainly residents of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. There are unlikely to be any victims of drone strikes in America, but we shouldn't let that distract us from fighting the steady encroachment of the anti-terrorist security state, here and abroad.

It makes sense for them to not say anything. They tried for 8 years to undue or oppose the Bush security apparatus only to hit a Republican brick wall on the Patriot act and Guantanamo. Now, there are a few Republicans also questioning it. Unfortunately, these are the same Republicans which will say the sky is green if Obama says it's blue.
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If the Democrats quickly say "Rand Paul has a point," Rand Paul will retreat since he's not looking for agreement from the Democrats. But let him rail against the Obama administration for a while, start talking about civil liberties again, get lots of other Republicans on board, get them committed. Then the Democrats should say "Rand Paul has a point," and back it up with legislation.

You should get a medal from the DNC for your service to the Party. Democrats, don't fall for the Republican standing up for what you believe in! It's all part of Obama's secret plan!
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I admit I has similar wishful thinking during the election. Romney's really a radical moderate! But I think I had a bit more evidence for that claim.

As you say, if Obama says the sky is blue, the Republicans will say it's green.

But what's been happening is that Obama "compromises" with the Republican position, stating that the sky is green after all. As soon as he does the Democrats rush to proclaim the greenness of the sky and rebuke anyone who says anything about blue.

Meanwhile, the Republicans, will now claim that the sky is rainbow polkadot and that anyone who says it's green is part of a Marxist Nazi plot.

The whole thing is perverse beyond words. And up until yesterday I had little hope for any positive resolution.

Now? I have hope. In the person of Rand Paul - a man who opposes (nearly) everything I stand for. It's the stuff of epic tragedy.

I'm not suggesting that this is a master plan that was orchestrated in advance (or even one that's happening). I'm suggesting that, once faced with a Rand Paul filibuster on drone strikes, a lot of Democrats will really want him to keep talking and not want to scare him off by agreeing with him.

I completely agree with all your points about what the focus ideally would be. But from a practical level, just as drones are a "weapon of weakness," a House representative demagoguing Americans by decrying how drone strikes in Peoria will play is an admission that Americans are apathetic to the "real domestic victims of our growing police state."
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Additionally, Republicans are probing for a weak point in Obama's armor, since attacks based on abortion, birth control, immigration, the welfare state, monetary policy, unemployment, abolishing governmental departments, and attacking stimulus spending did not yield results last November. A little disingenuousness never hurt anyone's campaigning.

"We kill suspected terrorists with drones because we lack the capability to arrest them."

Read this, was about to say it was not entirely correct, then decided it was entirely wrong.

We kill suspected terrorists with drones because the Left has determined that, instead of capture and interrogate, it was morally preferable to kill and forget. That's why we do it.

Guantanamo Bay had been so villainized via the Democratic Party's villianization program, that just killing people, and the ones in their immediate vicinity regardless of who they are or their intelligence potential, is somehow humane.

Villainizing, like elections, like wars, has consequences- we no longer waterboard, we now just kill.

This is the second time today I've come across the word 'villainization' or its variant 'villainizing'. Even though I had never read the word before, I had no trouble understanding it when I came across it for the first time ever earlier today on IMDb. I'm just intrigued that the word exists even though the word 'demonization' was already around.

Alternatively, it's far easier to kill someone then to fly in a team of commandos, potentially into a very hostile area, to *attempt* to arrest someone. So the choices are: hellfire missile on the house you are 90% sure they are in, or probably end up with American body bags because you heli-dropped some marines in the middle of a terrorist camp to try and handcuff a guy.

Drones are faster, cleaner, with a longer arm than our ability to drop boots on the ground, with less US casualties to boot.

That makes no sense. No one has a problem with capturing and interrogating terrorist suspects; it's far superior to killing them since you (a) can get information and (b) can release them if you were wrong about them being terrorists. Drones are used because we just don't have the ability to patrol that much area, send in troops, capture the suspect, and return safely.

The problem that the "Left" (which includes every branch of the armed forces, so we're talking about some crazy hippies here) has is with torturing people. There's an enormous difference.

Also, the risks to the soldiers and the risks of political fallout were higher with rendition, so it is/was less likely to be over-used. Drone strikes, on the other hand, are basically risk free. no-one seems to care who gets blown up. That means they are more likely to be over-used.

But this is completely irrelevant to the decision making on the White House's part. It's hard to think of any situation where the military and CIA wouldn't prefer to capture terrorists alive so they can interrogate them or find out if they made any mistakes, but the fact is that they can't. In an ideal world, dropping a special forces team into hostile territory would be the default course of action, but because it's unfeasible, drones abound.

Remember, drones weren't being used against insurgents in Iraq nor are they currently being used (for reasons other than surveillance) against insurgents in the developed areas of Afghanistan. Instead, human soldiers are sent to deal with the problem. But in the southern mountainous areas that are hard to patrol and navigate, drones are the only real way to maintain security. And then there are other countries, like Pakistan and Yemen, where for obvious reasons the military cannot regularly send ground troops because of the massive risk, so drones are once again the best of many bad options.

The alternative is to send SEALs after every identified Taliban fighter hiding in Pakistan. Of course, what happens if Pakistani police or military respond to a disturbance only to encounter US troops? Or if something goes horribly wrong and the SEALs are stuck in foreign territory with no support?

Nobody likes them, but drones are the best of only bad options. And at least compared to every past military technology, they are the most precise and result in the least collateral damage.

In case you didn't notice, the dam hippies won the election and are running things and doing the killing and the torturing. My side lost and is observing their moral compass.

Between losing power of the US federal government and its spending or sending some Hellfire missiles to knock out some terrorist, his/her closest friends, family members, and a few strangers, the hippies have chosen the latter.

Drones don't collect intel- they just kill. Much is lost by killing someone versus questioning them but much doesn't have to be dealt with as well. They chose to kill Osama Bin Ladin with navy seals and a hellicopter mission when they could have used a drone. It's a change in policy versus limitation in ability.

After you've demonized Guantanamo Bay, and you tried trying a suspect in NY only to have a massive public outcry, if the Seals go around capturing people, where exactly do you put these people? Answer... you don't capture them and you put them directly into the ground. You lose the intel but you don't have the political problems either.

The vast majority of reporting on this mini-issue didn't mention the points MS raises. They also don't mention the CIA is prohibited from spying in the US and that it isn't the CIA which uses drones to kill overseas. The US military runs the assassination drones. Funny thing is the CIA has an FAQ posted about these basics, but I no longer expect the press will spend the time necessary to type a few search words and then read a bit.

So Paul was protesting stuff which, as MS says, is nonsense and which the CIA legally can't do at all. What is the principle behind that?

Strange thing is there is a reason. I thought MS was going there at the end of the post but he didn't: the reason is the current idea that the 2nd Amendment is meant to protect Americans from the American government, that it is meant to allow arming for rebellion. If the government can use drones within the US to shoot at Americans, then Americans would in this view be entitled even more to absolute gun rights. And not just gun rights but huge freaking guns that can be used to protect against drones. So laser scopes and even missiles would then be protected under the 2nd Amendment. Of course, the idea the 2nd Amendment is meant to justify arming for rebellion is bluntly idiotic but that is where we're going as an utterly insane people.

Really? Responses like this is why I have no faith in the future of communication. You distort and then use your distortions to make your own point as though it actually responds to what I say. I read your comments and see this is your typical method. You should try giving what other people say an honest read and an honest response. You might then actually contribute.

So as to your first point, I was talking about what the media has covered. I read the papers and listened to the reports on TV. I saw one mention of what the CIA can do and how the CIA can't do this. I didn't say Paul didn't know this. But you say that is what I said. Which means you either refuse to read or prefer to distort. I presume the latter.

As to your second, I kind of agree with your point but you say it in such a way it's an insult. If indeed Paul is trying to quell the idea that government will attack its own citizens, then great. But where does that idea come from? Why would someone think the US government could attack its own citizens in the USA itself without following due process? By what stretch of imagination is that permissible under the Constitution? So what you're essentially saying is Paul wants the Administration to say they won't violate the Constitution. Why ask that question? The Administration can't violate the Constitution because it is sworn to uphold it. If they do, that's criminal. So maybe you can't understand that or maybe you believe citizens should so distrust government that they need to arm themselves against drones. But it's an absurdity.

And that is why I've decide to tune you out completely. Until I see some evidence you can read and respond honestly, there's no point in discussing anything with you.

It's stupid to ask the question for another reason. If you're going to break an oath, generally you don't advertise the fact. For example, I doubt Nixon would go, gosh yes I plan to have some staff B&E the opposition's offices.

Back in college I might've raised my fist is solidarity with Rand Paul, Red State, Code Pink, and Anonymous. But I agree more with MS. Granted, Paul does actually oppose the broader use of drones in and outside the US and he pointed that out during his filibuster. And the resolution he wanted to introduce was broader. But he chose to focus narrowly on drone strikes against US citizens on US soil, probably thinking that it's one area where there should be unanimous agreement. I think he should've gone a little broader but it looks like more of a tactical decision than an ideological one.

Nevertheless, he managed to accomplish a few important things.

1. Brought attention to the lack of checks and balances in the global war on terror.
2. Brought attention to the now unquestioned tradition of the executive branch to claim maximum power. It can't even rule out killing US citizens on US soil without due process? In Citizens United, the FEC claimed it can ban books!
3. Brought left and right together for a night, restoring some faith in our elected representatives. It really was a Mr. Smith moment and even if you disagree on the substance, you can't help but admire the stand.
4. Raised Paul's political stock about 1000%. Paul 2016?

Paul was one of very few Republicans who could credibly mount this filibuster. He voted for all of Obama's nominations and planned to vote to confirm Brennan. I've always held the same view that presidents should be allowed to appoint whomever they want. Not only is confirming Obama's nominations the right thing to do but it proved to be strategically valuable for Paul. Imagine that. Doing the right thing actually pays in Washington, this time.

Not really random people, and they're only defenseless *because* the US uses those "robot planes". Sure, America could send soldiers after them, but that would give them a chance to defend themselves -- a risk the US doesn't want to take.

Do you think for some reason the US government should be sending its troops to die?

No I think the US should have a clear constitutional process on how they handle terrorist suspects overseas. I use the word suspects because we've never seen the evidence against them, neither have they been afforded due process.

There is no internationally recognized habeas corpus and extending the U.S. Constitution extraterritorially cannot be done. Providing some legal rights that encompass habeas corpus rules is of course something that the Congress could do, but never has and likely never will.

Surely you'd apply the same rules to war then? Because if so, every single soldier in world history is by definition a murderer. After all, in no war has there ever been a court-driven process of granting due process to all suspected enemy combatants.

This is a completely silly argument. Foreign warfare and domestic crime are two very different things and unless the terrorists in question are on US territory, the courts don't have any role nor should they.

I begrudge the Obama folks for making me even vaguely nod my head to Rand Paul, but I would also like to point out that extrajudicial killings of US citizens aren't all that uncommon in the US. Drones are kind of creepy, but police issued revolvers make you just as dead.
Anyway, I wish more democrats would be willing to grow a backbone on this issue. It is shameless and a rare example of where we may find common ground between left civil libertarians and more libertarian elements of the right. Seems a shame to waste such a rare commodity.

You would think that something as simple as, "We swear to never shoot a missile, that was designed to be carried by a plane or helicopter in a war zone, at an American citizen in America without a trial first" would be something we could all agree on.

I'll vote for the first person to use that as a campaign slogan, party be damned.

Can we extend this to the APC thing my hometown, yokel police force bought with DHS money after 9/11? Though perhaps those sneaky terrorists have been sizing up the demo derby at the county fair for years! The militarization of our police force is something we should all find worrisome.

Yes Americans do need to concern themselves regarding the incremental nature of conditioning related to acceptance of new plateaus measured in terms of lost liberty.
Scorned law enforcement officers at all levels seem to possess a James Bond license to kill. We used to see legal proceedings as each threshold was crossed.
However today the lead in to the State of the Union Address is a public execution that included the burning of private property.
The NDAA is real..ironically the offensive language was written by the Dinner Guests at the White House last night --a meeting that became the narrative for the Networks to report while Rand and Co were asking for some sanity.
Saying that the Holder Cruz exchange amounted to a defining moment regarding the over 30,000 Drones complete with facial recognition programming the ability to determine if a private citizen is armed is superfluous.
The predicates Holder made sure were depicted in Cruz's hypothetical only says that a computer program becomes Judge Jury and Executioner and Holder is willing to argue the merits after they have taken that next incremental step--it was not an official position.

I can't tell if you are serious or not. Of course drones killing Americans on U.S. soil isn't an issue... yet. The point of the filibuster was to get the administration to state a clear position on objective limits to the powers that it claims. Paul set the bar very low and the administration couldn't even clear it. That should tell you something about executive overreach. Of course, if you're too busy trying to fashion partisan talking points out of this, I can see how you could miss it.

You do realize that the AGM-114 Hellfire is the name of the missile shot by drones don't you? This is not a fear tactic instead it is a comforting example of a politician actually studying out a topic before talking about it.

It's not a matter of whether the Executive Branch will DECIDE to use this power to kill Americans on American soil. The heart of the matter is that the Executive Branch has the decision at all. Whether we have to worry about it or not, the fact that the government has the ability to make such a decision is a troubling infringement on our rights.

We've had SWAT teams in the US for a long time. I don't see anything different here.
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Either you want Constitutionally-based law-and-order, or you don't. And, despite the constant cries from the Right that Obama's a socialist, I don't see anything to suggest that we're looking at anything different from ten years ago, or twenty.
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Only, that the Department of Justice has done a better job of ensuring that local police forces follow rule-of-law, such as in LA, Seattle, and Portland, OR.

You'd best decide if this is a "war" or "organized crime", and while you are at it, suggest actual solutions rather than lobbing grenades. Don't bother suggesting current international police forces: proven already to be mostly ineffective in these types of situations.